Companies typically have difficulties tracking inventory items and their usage within their facilities. Many inventory items are misused, misplaced, and improperly tracked and replenished by the employees of the companies. Therefore, companies have incentives to track the items, hold employees responsible for missing items, properly account costs, and replenish the missing items based on demand. Typically items of the inventory are kept in a controlled space that is monitored. Some companies have used locking doors with keypads that allow only employees with authorized code to enter the controlled space. In addition, computers and bar code tags have been used to track the items in and out of the controlled space. However, these systems still lack tracking information, cost accounting information, security methods, and replenishments information in the process of tracking and monitoring the items stored in the controlled space and linking the responsible employee with the items being taken in and out of the controlled space.
The problem escalates when outside of a controlled environment such as a facility. Jobsite equipment theft is significant with industry loss estimates up to one billion dollars annually, according to a 2003 National Equipment Register study. Tool tracking and management systems provide one level of security, but a large percentage of theft includes tools disappearing from jobsites at the end of the workday. Some contemporary solutions to this problem include security portals designed for gate entrances and exits and activated by special electronic article surveillance (“EAS”) security tags. Similar to retail environments, in practice, the portal sounds an alarm when an EAS tagged tool passes through it, alerting jobsite security and management to a problem. Portals are designed to attach to any fence or gate system for a secure entry and exit point. However, these solutions still lack the tracking and access control that is beneficial on a jobsite with combinations of employees and contractors, as well as ease and portability of the secured area.
Therefore there is a need in the art for a system, apparatus and method that monitors and tracks items stored in a controlled space, which is conveniently portable for jobsites.